About This Book

As a small boy, Pip meets two people who will affect his whole life: Magwitch, an escaped convict he is forced to help, and Miss Havisham, whose beautiful but cold ward Estella young Pip adores.

In a mysterious churchyard, orphan Pip gives food to Magwitch and unknowingly sets forth the events of his life. Until a secret benefactor pays for him to go to London to become a gentleman, Pip never dreams he will meet Magwitch again, nor just how wrong his expectations are. Over time Pip receives riches from a mysterious benefactor, snobbishly abandons his friends for high society and great expectations, and gains an education through misfortune and sorrow.

Great Expectations is at once a superbly constructed novel of spellbinding mastery and a profound examination of moral values. Here, some of Dickens's most memorable characters come to play their part in a story whose title itself reflects the deep irony that shaped Dickens's searching reappraisal of the Victorian middle class.